Day 29

Pila (continued)

No, no, it's something else. It's not a movie. It's not all a movie. She's something else.

It's like having a half-digested pill stuck in your throat. It feels like it will be wedged there forever, calcifying, resisting orders to dissolve. You swallow and swallow, stretching your throat muscles like wingbuds, and nothing happens, but you know it's there. Oh, where is she from?

I am going on to the internet. I am going to search until I find the key to the ghost in my head. Then I will sleep. I hope I will sleep.

Miffy

God DAMMIT, why don't I have ANY clothes that don't look make me look like Violet Elizabeth Bott dragged through a surplus frill factory? I appear to have been walking round like a fucking Kewpie doll on acid and never twigged that it may not have helped the dirty-old-men-wanking- openly-at-me situation. If I were a doll, they should have swapped my head for a new one years ago.

Not that any of that ruffled crap fits me now anyway. In the third week after my subscription was snipped, I realised that, since I had shot up at least a foot from my previous 4'2 stature, the hems of my princess frocks were getting dangerously close to flashing the weeds of pubic hair that had sprung up across my crotch.

The aging process has been jerky and unpredictable. The hair came upon me like a curse in the space of three days ' Monday to Wednesday ' of that week. The left arm grew three inches longer than the right for a baffling two days in week two, before its twin caught up with it. One of my eyes has three creases beneath it, and I am waiting for symmetrical lines to spider from the other.

I bought a small sewing machine shortly after my first period (a red mudslide which nearly knocked me out with pain ' truly the fucking finger was yanked out of the dyke then, eh Fetz?) and my plan for this week is to dissect the costumes I have lived in these past twenty years.

The first dress to go will be a powder blue puff-sleeved Bo Peep number smothered in lace. I hesitate, my silver unpicker poised at the seam's knotty end. So this is what I look like to the outside world. I realise at that moment why my films sell so well, why I have been followed continually by closet fans clutching flowers for their wives, why I often receive anonymous letters requesting pairs of my used pants. I could sell every last scrap of this dress and make a tidy profit. Of course, it still wouldn't buy me another month, and hell, I'm a little sentimental anyway. I'll sell the jewellery instead.

A lipchew more, and I plunge my tiny lance into the ladder of thread holding together the panels of the skirt. The thread retreats through the tracks of tiny needle holes like a scared asp, and I grow more vicious, suddenly angry at the dress. I yank at the cotton, feel a rush of rage lend muscle and speed to my mission. The panels fall to the floor, one by one, limp parachutes without cargo. It is only when the last lies neutered and curled upon the floor, and I am left holding the bare bodice, that I hear the broom bang from the floor below, feel my throat prick with fatigue and realise that I have been screaming.

Pila

How do you begin to search? There is a service that lets you whistle a song you've heard, before naming the artist, track title, album title, year, label etc. It's nigh-on instant, providing you're not tone-deaf. Why isn't there a similar thing for images? If I could stick cables in my ears and let the machine pick my brain for the picture I want, give me details ' hell, a name would do ' well, that would be perfect. But I can't. I mean, there isn't. There isn't anything.

Disheartened, I type in "dark haired girl and thump a fist onto the Enter key. Thousands of hits: a snowstorm of porn. Anal anal anal. So many words: words and words. If you don't like that, here's the index. Brindee Gash, Lulelle Flex, Trandie Head, Miffy Renee, Vulva Peech. No thank you. I know the drill: click on one and you get email after email from religious hackers who have swarmed such sites ahead of you and will now make you pay for your sins with repetitive strain from pressing deletedeletedelete on email after email. Besides, I'm not interested. Not one of the front page girls ' always made-up, always twenty ' the respectable face of porn, their eyes pried wide for innocence, their cunts pried wide for consumers, not one of them makes me even consider touching myself. It's like watching cats mate, these stills of men punting into doggied brunettes. You expect at any moment the patient she-cat bottom to turn around and swipe the skin from their partner's nose in sheer pain.

Look at this stuff. Offal, sheer offal. It's no wonder I've taken to masturbating absently in public. I can't find anything on the biggest sex encyclopedia on the planet to jerk off to. Real women, however, stroking shop sample curtains, writing postcards in cafes, taut-calvedly cycling, the flick of their wrists in mundane activities, the solid movement of hair wet from brief rain, the stray strands pressed to the neck by a scarf, they make my clitoris ache and my veils itch.

Wait a second. Thumbnail images next to names. One name popping up, one picture. A dwarf actress? Oh no. No. Surely not...? No, claims to be an all-legal site. But something about her face is...I'm squinting now, trying to make out what it is, but she crumbles, pixelises before my gaze like a kidnap victim on the news. My eyes are tired. Shall I click? No, no, it could be a trap. Oh fuck, I'm considering funding child abuse. But she ' I just ' fuck, I have to know, if only so I can help her, the poor thing. I hope it's a dwarf.

I can't.

Just do it. Do it. Miffy Renee. It's right in front of you. If it's not her, you can destroy the computer. Just do it.

OK. Oh God. OK, cursor over, finger resting on left hand mouse key. A little pressure and all will become clear.

One. Two. Th -

The room is suddenly plunged into darkness. The campfire of the computer scheeeoowws into automatic shutdown and the little girl who may or may not be someone I may or may not know shrinks out of sight.

"Settle in, says a voice behind me. "I cut a few wires. We're here for the night and I want to tell a few ghost stories.

Martaro

As the knock comes at the door, I spill mountain coffee on my hand and curse whoever has distracted me.

Nursing my burns, I open the door, half-asleep.

"Still in your dressing gown? Good grief, Marty, didn't your mother ever teach you how to greet visitors properly?"

She leans against the doorframe, fiddling with her hair, in skintight jeans and crop tee shirt. Her nipples are deliciously erect and I hate her for it.

"She's your mother too, Saral."